Watch Out For Folks Who Say, `Actually`

August 18, 1989|By James Idema.

My friend, Murray, and I play the ``Actually`` game. Since he lives in New Haven and I live in Chicago, we play separately most of the time, but we check in once in a while by telephone. When we do meet we amuse each other relating our experiences. No, amuse isn`t the right word; we kill each other. Those near us often are not quite so entertained. In restaurants particularly our badinage has rarely fetched anything better than indulgent smiles. Two old geezers one-upping each other. Our wives are good sports, but they let us know that after a while sportsmanship gets old. And waiters impatient.

``Actually`` is one of those words that has slipped like a virus into everyday usage. ``Like`` is another, especially when used with the ubiquitous ``you know.`` There are others-extra baggage, devaluating the currency of our language. Murray and I began collecting them years ago, relentlessly loading our dialogue with them. But recently we began to focus exclusively on ``actually`` after I told him of the following experience.

My wife and I were returning home from New York on a flight that would continue to Seattle after the stop in Chicago. As our plane began its descent, the attendant was going down the aisle, routinely checking destinations. When she approached our row of three seats, we assured her that we were leaving the flight at Chicago. She smiled at the woman in the window seat.

``Are you going to Seattle?`` she asked. With the woman`s reply, our new game was launched.

``Actually,`` this passenger began. She hadn`t uttered a word since we`d buckled in at LaGuardia. Now as she batted her eyes, inclining across us toward the hostess, it became immediately obvious that here was someone who had been strangling on the need to explain.

``Actually, I was going on to Seattle to visit my sister, but my plans changed. My sister was called just last week to Chicago by a friend who took ill. Hepatitis. Terrible thing, hepatitis. From something bad you eat or drink? Anyway you get real sick with it and run a high fever and it takes forever to get over it. Is it infectious? I don`t know, but believe me I`m not going near her friend if I can help it. I`ll stay in a hotel. Actually, I wouldn`t have made this trip at all if I didn`t have important things to talk over with my sister. Family things. Our father died six months ago, you see. Heart. He was a widower. Not a rich man, but he did leave us a little something and we need to straighten out things. We have a brother. Half brother actually . . . .``

Our attendant, whose smile had frozen soon after the woman started talking, wore expressions first of worry, then of pain, finally of intense weariness, as though finally realizing she had made the wrong career choice. After a couple of polite efforts to interrupt, she began to back away, murmuring sympathetically, indicating awkwardly that she still had other passengers to see to.

You can guess what happened. As the hostess finally retreated safely, our fellow passenger continued her benumbing narrative to my wife and me without breaking stride. I recall vaguely now that the half brother might have turned out to be more trouble for the sisters than the hepatitis. But I recall vividly pushing my wife toward the exit the moment the plane stopped at the gate. I phoned Murray as soon as we got home.

Although I`m aware that the word does have legitimacy, that it does not inevitably presage endless digression, the woman in 16 C made me wary of people who start with ``actually`` when answering a question. Their numbers are legion, and growing. However, I am grateful for the fun she created for Murray and me. For us she remains the paradigm of complusive explicators, provider of endless material, the one who comes insantly to mind when Murray and I greet each other.

``Hey, Murray,`` I say, setting him up. ``How are you?``

``Actually,`` Murray says and goes into his act. Murray`s more creative, more aggressive than I. He says that when he can`t reach me he recruits innocent players for the ``actually`` game, lures them into making the fatal inquiry, then watches their expressions as he launches into a discourse of paralysing obtuseness.